ArkCon 2019 Welcomes Top Researchers with a Cybersecurity Challenge

ArkCon 2019 is just around the corner. CyberArk Labs is hosting its event for top cybersecurity researchers in Tel Aviv, Israel on April 29. CyberArk Labs issued challenges to the cybersecurity community that only the best of the best could solve. Now, those who answered one or more cybersecurity challenge – and other top cybersecurity researchers – are meeting to attend sessions and collaborate with their peers. This year’s guest speaker goes by pancake (with a small “p”), creator of the popular, free and open source reverse engineering platform radare2.

I spoke with Doron Naim, CyberArk Lab’s Group Manager and the event’s organizer, about what he has planned for the upcoming conference and why it’s going to be bigger and better than ever.

What do you hope attendees will learn at ArkCon?

Naim: We’re hosting three speakers this year at ArkCon. “pancake” – our keynote speaker from Spain – is going to share the new feature in radare2 (an open source tool he wrote) – a free reverse engineering platform. The second speaker is Eyal Itkin, a security researcher from CheckPoint, who will share his insights into RDP protocol and how he discovered related vulnerabilities. Nimrod Stoler, a security researcher from CyberArk, will talk about research he’s conducted on container security.

In addition to the speakers, one of the most important benefits of attending this event is the level of knowledge sharing and collaboration – so there will be plenty of quality networking opportunities.

What are you most proud of about this year’s ArkCon?

Naim: This year’s ArkCon is going to be much more than a standard cyber event. First, the audience is highly professional, the very best people in the field. Second, ArkCon is going to have lots of exciting ways for attendees to participate and engage. During the conference, attendees can compete for prizes by solving each cybersecurity challenge. There will be plenty of space for interactive games, food and networking. The goal is to encourage healthy competition and help people to get to know each other. That way, we boost the networking level and make the conference a fun, rewarding place to be.

What are you most excited to do at this year’s ArkCon? What are you most looking forward to?

Naim: Meeting the challenge solvers. Two weeks before the event, we opened up challenges for the interested individuals to take. Each cybsecurity challenge was written by different people with different skills. Every challenge comes from a different aspect of the cyber security field. The ones who solved most of them are experts in their field and will be presented with prizes on the stage at the end of the conference.

What are the biggest opportunities ArkCon presents?

Naim: Free of charge education and networking. ArkCon gathers a distinct audience of highly skilled people who can contribute a lot to the market. ArkCon provides them with the platform to meet face-to-face and share their experience and insights. ArkCon does all this and more.

How will this year’s ArkCon be different from last year’s?

Naim: ArkCon this year is going to be four times bigger than the previous one. Last year’s ArkCon we hosted at the Israeli CyberArk offices. There was a room for very limited number of guests, so we decided to initiate a cybersecurity challenge and only give tickets to the people who solved it. This year is different. Guests can register freely, so solving the challenges is now all about the prestige. The Hall of Fame for our top cybersecurity challenge-solvers can be found here.

A lot of people put a lot of time into solving (or failing to solve) your challenges. What went into creating your challenges?

Naim: We got really good feedback. Hundreds of people are trying to solve the challenges every day. Each cybersecurity challenge is very different from all the others – which makes them harder and more interesting than the traditional Capture the Flags [a type of information security competition.] More than 100 people have already solved one or more of the challenges. We’ve found our winners, but we’re keeping that a secret until the conference. We’ll announce the winners then.

If you’re interested in learning more about ArkCon 2019, visit the webpage, register for the conference or keep up-to-date by following @ArkC0n on Twitter as well as following the event on Instagram and Facebook.